


to serve, not to rule

by templemarker



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:59:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templemarker/pseuds/templemarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sloan groaned--definitely not theatrics--and dropped her head onto the pile of photocopied files Research had brought her five minutes ago. At least the paper was kind of soft. She could nap here. Right? Maybe she would absorb all the information by osmosis. That totally happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to serve, not to rule

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atheilen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheilen/gifts).



> Happy holidays, atheilen! I love Sloan Sabbith. The end.

Sloan groaned--definitely not theatrics--and dropped her head onto the pile of photocopied files Research had brought her five minutes ago. At least the paper was kind of soft. She could nap here. Right? Maybe she would absorb all the information by osmosis. That totally happens. 

"You all right there, Sloan?" MacKenzie called from across the bullpen. 

Sloan only raised her arm with a thumbs-up in response. 

"Right, well, don't nap that way, I can tell you from experience your spine will have glorious revenge," MacKenzie said. 

"Stop reading my mind," Sloan whined quietly to the files. They were as judgmental and forgiving as Sloan's last boyfriend. She wondered if she could also break up with the files spectacularly in the Starbucks on Fifth and East 47th. 

It probably wouldn't be as cathartic and sexually empowering as the first time, though. 

With a sigh, Sloan sat up and leaned back in her chair, spreading her legs wide to pop out the kink in her sacrum. She took a sip of the nearly-cold coffee from the Starbucks on 47th and grabbed the first file off the pile. The very high and somewhat precarious pile. 

She hadn't volunteered for this assignment, but neither did she refuse it. The Pope was arriving next week as part of his papal visit to the United States, which included mass, kids, and the 9/11 memorial, but most significantly to her, Pope Francis would be delivering an address to Congress on Thursday, and the United Nations that Friday. 

Sloan wasn't particularly religious, but her father was Catholic, if perpetually lapsed. The Pope remained a pretty Big Deal, particularly this Pope, who had charmed the world by, well, by not being a Eurocentric bigoted money-hoarding asshole. Her mother had gone so far as to put a photo of Pope Francis on the mantel, which was hilarious because her mom was Jewish if she was anything. Perpetually lapsed, there, too. 

It was a little out of her wheelhouse--"Pope Visits America!" didn't exactly tap the financial headlines--but she'd gotten caught in the News Night pitch meeting by virtue of trying to swipe the last pumpernickel bagel and the artichoke spread from the conference room when staff started packing it in. As assignments were going around, Pope Francis' visit had stayed on the board without someone attached to it. MacKenzie's eyes had alighted on Sloan, a challenging look in her eye, and said, "You want it? We'll give you seven minutes on air, and if you can find a financial angle you can plug that and still have your five minutes."

Sloan had barely let it cross her mind before she said "Fine." MacKenzie nodded her head firmly, wrote Sloan's name on the board, and the crowd had dispersed to go their various ways. That woman always had an agenda. Sloan just wasn't sure what it was, when it came to MacKenzie's interest in her. 

The thing was, a visit from the Pope totally had a financial angle. And not a bullshit one either. The Vatican was an independent city-state that happened to be located inside of Rome. They produced their own coin, they had their own central bank, and the Pope was like King and CFO rolled together into one uncomfortable position of global power and influence. 

Vatican Bank alone managed $64 billion worth of assets for their clients, and that didn't even touch the church's annual revenue. The Holy See--the governing body of the Vatican--had been running a deficit for the last few years, but hardly a significant one in the scheme of things. And even then, the Vatican's overall equity in cash, gold, priceless artwork and treasures, and property outweighed the loss of revenue by changing congregations and would for years to come. 

Sloan dug further into the pile, reviewing the accusations of money laundering and profiteering; the Nazi gold, Holocaust survivors, and child molestation lawsuits; and strategies of bringing the Holy See in suit before the International Criminal Court. 

Yet after Pope Benedict stepped down and Pope Francis stepped up, some of the furor died down. Maybe it was because of Francis' attitude, his willingness to confront issues that his counterparts avoided, but while there were still criminal, moral, and legal issues, coverage of them had died down. 

After going through about half the pile, cross-referencing the older print material with online coverage and research, Sloan kept coming back to Pope Francis' address to Congress, followed the next day by his address to the UN.

This was the first Pope ever to address a joint session of Congress. And this was also a Pope who publicly spoke about his concerns of a materialist, capitalist society--which at this point was about the only point of semi-agreement amongst the members of Congress. And he was likely to reiterate the same to the nations of the UN, so many of which were turning to the capitalist economy model to lever out of debt, poverty, and privation. 

Sloan twirled her chair, choking down the last of her very cold coffee with a grimace. As she spun, she caught sight of Maggie; with each revolution Maggie seemed to come closer, until the chair finally stopped and Sloan was looking up at Maggie's face, still holding the inner weariness she wore ever since her return from Uganda. Maggie was a changed person, in ways Sloan knew she didn't know the woman well enough to ask about. But she was still there, promoted and always in Will's side pocket. 

"So, the papal visit," Maggie started, learning against Sloan's desk. 

"The Pope is coming to New York, the Pope is coming to New York, hi-ho the dairy-oh the Pope is coming to New York," Sloan sang, giggling a little at the end. 

Maggie's eyebrow raised, and it was _so cool_ that she could do it. Sloan couldn't do one. Both eyebrows went up at the same time. She tried it, and watched Maggie's eyebrow go up even higher. Impressive. 

"Impressive," she said. 

Maggie coughed. "Um, yeah, okay. So, the papal visit. I was already arranging press passes for Bob and Joel, and when MacKenzie told me you were on it I got one for you too. So--you're off to the UN on Friday. I don't know if you're doing a segment? But Marguerite, our press contact, is a sweetheart and she can help you get where you need to be. She and Will have this poker game, it's kind of sickening how cute it is, but she'll have your back. Make sure you're there by 7, Anderson Cooper can get really bitchy if he feels like you're holding up the line."

"Oh god," Sloan said, and put her head back down on her files. It made her back hurt a lot more: the pile was half as high.

"Soooo," Maggie said, raising that amazing eyebrow again, "do you need help? Or to talk it through? I was about to take a lunch break," (it was four in the afternoon), "we could walk-and-talk it down to the deli on Fourth."

"Yes," Sloan said, but it was muffled enough by the pile that Maggie said "What?" forcing Sloan to lift her head--actually that was a good idea because her neck was screaming bloody murder--and say "Yes, yes, I need to talk, there's so much going on, why did I agree to do this, MacKenzie is so mean."

Maggie actually grinned at that. It was remarkable how it transformed her entire face; it brought something of the girl she was, when she was an intern and eager for anything, back to her face. Sloan smiled reflexively back. 

"She's pushing you," Maggie said, laughing a little. "She thinks you're good. Or, I mean, she thinks you could do better. So she's pushing you to see how you do with something out of your comfort zone."

"Fuck," Sloan said. 

Maggie nodded. "Yeah." She paused, looking around to see if anyone was eavesdropping on them. Remarkably no one was. "I think," she said, learning a little closer to Sloan and dropping her voice, "that she's thinking ahead, to what Will is going to need. A few years from now, what the show is going to need and the support Will will need." She paused again and Sloan gave in to the urge to bite at her thumbnail, undoing years of self-discipline in one under-caffeinated moment. 

"I think she's thinking about a co-anchor," Maggie all but whispered. "And I think she's speculating that the co-anchor would be you."

"Oh god," Sloan whispered back. 

Maggie nodded, grinning again. "Not to freak you out, or whatever," she said at normal volume, stepping back. "You're going to do great at this. You have a PhD in Economics! You can do anything."

"You are going to _jinx me_ ," Sloan said furiously, and it was worth it to hear Maggie's wonderful laughter. 

Sloan grabbed her jacket, and followed as Maggie grabbed hers, and they headed for the elevator. 

"So what's your angle?" Maggie asked, pushing some of her dark hair out of her face. 

"You know all the donations, tithes or whatever? It's called Peter's Pence, and it's in a state of flux because of how the body of the Catholic church is changing so rapidly. Here you've got a pretty new Pope, talking about not just moderation, but the abandonment of the capitalist framework, which he says is fundamentally in opposition to the tenets of the Church..."

The hum of the bullpen kept going, never sleeping.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Title from the following quote: "Money has to serve, not to rule." -- Pope Francis
> 
> 2\. Wanna become a Pope? [Learn how!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF8I_r9XT7A)
> 
> 3\. Wanna (attempt to) understand the Vatican? [Let the knowledge be yours!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPHRIjI3hXs)
> 
> 4\. The Pope's [address to Congress](http://www.c-span.org/video/?328063-1/pope-francis-address-joint-meeting-congress). (Yeah. I watch C-Span. For fun.)
> 
> 5\. The Pope's [address to the United Nations General Assembly](http://www.c-span.org/video/?328180-1/pope-francis-address-un-general-assembly). 
> 
> 6\. I wish Newsroom could have gone to season 10 just to watch Maggie develop and change and grow. (Among other reasons.)


End file.
